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In 1988, the House of Quality (HOQ) was introduced to the United States in an article written by Don Clausing and John Hauser. Prior to their article, the HOQ had long been used in Japan as a technique for product development and was rarely used in the U.S. In less than 30 years, the HOQ has gone from obscurity to mainstream. Since Clausing and Hauser’s article, the HOQ has become a regularly used product development tool and is being taught as a foundational block in the Design for Six Sigma project management framework. Please see the attached pdf for my thoughts on QFD/HOQ.

Introduction

Leading a team is an important job - everyone looks to the leader to answer questions. They watch how he/she behaves so they know what is acceptable, and they listen to the leader to find out what is most important.

Problem

We use email to help us get things accomplished. However, it is widely accepted email is not the best mechanism for tracking action. The email method can lose information, cause confusion and missed expectations.

Problem

As the CEO of Ceptara and Lean Six Sigma practitioner, I find myself traveling frequently. Often for sales calls and in some cases for consulting projects. To meet my tax obligations and to track how much time and money is being spent traveling between jobs, I needed a method for tracking my trips. Just after college I used a mileage logbook and it worked.

Problem

Moving from managing action via an email inbox to more task driven lists is a great step forward. However, soon we end up with long lists of tasks that are constantly overdue, causing frustation, and often returning us back to our more comfortable (yet less productive) habits.

Problem

Often the email inbox is a "holding area" for work. A queue or bin that contains work waiting for us to do something or provide a response. Imagine the email inbox is a stack of paper sitting on the corner of the desk. Which would you find more distracting, a pile of paper that is two feet tall, or a few pages of paper? The inbox is the stack of paper.

Problem

One cool feature in our Outlook add-in [FocusMe for Outlook] is the 5Ds processing ability, ie. when an email is processed, the originating email is moved to the Drawer (an archive or project folder). However, until recently, when a message is forwarded or replied to, it took another click to file the originating email.

Problem

I have always struggled with note-taking. Since college, I've been using the paper method for taking notes and have a 'method' for identifying different types of notes, e.g. actions, questions, ideas, etc. But the thing that has always alluded me is 'how to capture the actions in notes' and make sure I do them and not forget.

I was talking to a friend the other day and he was mentioning a conversation he had with a client concerning the 5S’s. The client said that they’ve tried it a few times but it never stuck. I quietly went home and started thinking about the 5S’s and began asking myself some questions. The first question we always ask is “why,” so I started there. Not just each iteration in the 5S system but why 5S’s? Why not 5T’s or 5W’s?